“Leggo, Mirabelle! It’s a damned outrage!”
“No, it isn’t either! Theodore, don’t you see? The Mayor’s weakened––they probably read your speech at Chicago––they aren’t waiting for the amendment! They’re enforcing the ordinance––better than we ever dreamed of! And that means that you’re going to the City Hall next autumn!” She leaned out and bowed to the gaping officer. “We beg your pardon. You did perfectly right. Thank you for doing your duty. Can we go on, now?”
The man scratched his head, perplexedly.
“What are you tryin’ to do––kid me? Sure; go ahead. Show that summons to anybody else that stops you.”
In the two miles to the hill, they were stopped seven times, and when they arrived at the house, Mirabelle was almost hysterical with triumph. Without delaying to remove her hat, she sent a telegram to the national president, and she also telephoned to a few of her League cronies, to bid them to a supper in celebration. Mr. Mix made three separate essays 278 to escape, but after the third and last trial was made to appear in its proper light as a subterfuge, he lapsed into heavy infestivity; and he spent the evening drinking weak lemonade, and trying to pretend that it belonged to the Collins family. And while his wife (still wearing her insignia) and his guests were talking in a steady stream, Mr. Mix was telling himself that if Ordinance 147 was going to prevent so innocent an occupation as riding in a car on Sunday, he was very much afraid that life in this community was going to be too rich for his blood. That is, unless he were elected to be chief of the community. And in this case, he would see that he wasn’t personally inconvenienced.
At half past seven in the morning, Mirabelle was already at the breakfast table, and semi-audibly rating Mr. Mix for his slothfulness, when he came in with an odd knitting of his forehead and an unsteady compression of his mouth. To add to the effect, he placed his feet with studied 279 clumsiness, and as he gave the Herald into Mirabelle’s hands, he uttered a sound which annoyed her.
“For the cat’s sake, Theodore, what are you groaning about?”
“Groan yourself,” said Mr. Mix, and put a trembling finger on the headline. As he removed the finger, it automatically ceased to tremble. Mr. Mix didn’t care two cents for what was in the Herald, but he knew that to Mirabelle it would be a tragedy, and that he was cast for the part of chief mourner.